we are the only major government agency that is not headquartered in washington, dc, and both the fact that we're not in washington as well as the date that we were established, tells you something about our history. in 1946, troops were returning home from europe and the pacific after world war ii. the joy of their return was tempered by public health concerns about what might be arriving with them. would their homecoming also reintroduce diseases that had been erased from the national scene? in the southeastern part of the united states, up until well into the 20th century, this was an area that had malaria. there was a lot of concern that as soldiers returned from areas, particularly in the pacific, which were high-incidence areas for malaria, that as they came back to military bases in the southeast, that there was a possibility that they would reintroduce malaria into the mosquito populations around those military bases, and so a little unit was established in atlanta, being that it was the largest city in the southeast, to make sure that those mosquito populations were kept under